


Not altogether gentle

by robotboy



Series: The Doksany Stories [7]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (background relationships) - Freeform, Episode Related, Episode: s01e07 A Rebellious Woman, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, MuskiesRewatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:31:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: Athos comes back from the woods, and Aramis warms him up.





	Not altogether gentle

The drizzle had turned to a downpour. Athos hardly noticed. His horse trudged through it, and he was thoroughly soaked by the time they were at the garrison’s gates.

It was Aramis who came to meet him. ‘She’s gone?’ he asked.

Athos blinked. _Ninon_. He meant Ninon.

‘She is,’ he confirmed. ‘She’s safe.’

Aramis muttered a prayer as Athos dismounted and handed the reins to a stableboy. Without a saddle beneath him, it was clear how thoroughly soaked he was. Aramis noticed too.

‘Inside with you,’ he declared. Before Athos could accuse him of mothering, he continued: ‘It would be frightfully ignoble of a Musketeer to die from catching a cold.’

Athos let himself be led to Aramis’ quarters. He had off his gloves, jacket, boots, and belts before Aramis came at him with a towel. Athos had not realised how utterly wet he was until Aramis’ towel was on his head. Aramis rubbed him so vigorously he almost stumbled. Having his head smothered, warm, and hidden didn't help. Aramis' fingers massaged into his skull, blunted by the towel, longer than was needed to dry his hair. Aramis was doing it on purpose, no doubt, but that didn't mean it wasn't working. This was Aramis; always so intimate, whether with his touch or his questions. It could cut closer than Athos was able to bear. Athos prayed Aramis would bite his damnably talented tongue: he couldn't answer the questions he knew Aramis had.

Aramis moved to Athos' neck, working the tension around his spine. There was no pretension of drying him for a moment. Athos leaned into the touch.

'There,' Aramis murmured fondly.

Athos cracked an eye open to peer at him. Aramis moved swiftly to his face, wiping his cheeks and causing him to squint. The movement felt a lot like drying tears, not rain. Even imagining it forced a lump into Athos' throat. No doubt Aramis could tell he was redder than the weather could have made him. He was almost resolved to turn away, hide from the attention, when Aramis fluffed his beard with a silly movement. Athos' lip quirked at it, and Aramis gave him a grin.

'Now,' Aramis said, in an unnecessarily husky tone. 'Let's get you out of those wet things.'

Athos felt his eyebrows move, but he didn't disagree. In the warmth of Aramis' room, he was beginning to itch. His shirt was heavy when he pulled its edges, dragging it over his head. Aramis replaced it with the towel, his arms coming around Athos' shoulders. Athos was still prising the cuffs from his wrists when Aramis kissed him.

A better man would have withdrawn, thought of Ninon, thought of _his wife_. Another man would blame Aramis' wiles, distracting him deliberately, advancing in a moment of weakness. But what in his life, Athos thought miserably, couldn't be called a moment of weakness? He kissed Aramis back—even a little forcefully, in a way that made Aramis moan in appreciation—entirely because it felt good.

Aramis gripped his shoulders, sighing into his mouth. Aramis would drink everything Athos poured onto him. His lips would be bruised from this, cheeks scratched raw, and Aramis would find it endearing. Athos could be rough when kindness was too much to comprehend, and Aramis either answered in turn, or at times like these, continue to be as gentle as Athos could take. Athos would have liked to be pushed, dealt with, put back into himself in a way that hurt. Aramis showed no inclination to do so, instead moving the towel to his waist. Athos hadn't realised how clammy he was—how warm he could feel again.

Aramis gave an appreciative hum, touch slipping to his hips and up, through the hair on his belly to his chest. Another night, he would rake, even pull at it, to make Athos groan and writhe. Now, he guided Athos back until Athos felt the edge of the bed behind him. Athos bowed his head, hair falling in his eyes: Aramis would take things from here.

Aramis unlaced his braies, and knelt to peel them from Athos' legs. The towel replaced them, the fluffy circles Aramis made growing far less necessary the further they crept up his thighs. When Aramis reached his cock, Athos swatted the towel away, rolling his eyes. Aramis chuckled, nuzzling him instead. He began with kisses and cajoling licks: Athos was too cold for more, barely hard yet. Aramis did most of the work with his tongue, not really sucking him. He stole glances at Athos, reaching to squeeze his hand when Athos was too likely to drift away.

Aramis was too good. Athos was hard, nearly leaking, with Aramis' lips dragging along the underside of his cock, popping over the head and off again, tongue twisting and swiping at him. Aramis rocked on his heels to admire his work, then slapped his own thighs.

'On the bed, Athos,' he ordered.

Athos welcomed the command, dropping onto his back, his weight resting on his elbows. Aramis knelt in the gap between Athos' thighs. He gave Athos an appraising look, and leaned over to fish out the little bottle of oil he kept nearby. Athos' thighs were already sprawling when Aramis took one of his ankles, easing his leg up until it rested on Aramis' shoulder. The stretch was a welcome distraction. Aramis' hands eased over his legs, up to his chest, then tousled his hair. Athos raised an eyebrow, and Aramis held his gaze with confidence as he took the oil and coated his fingers in it.

For one, he didn't tease. His touch was purposeful; feeling Athos out, rubbing to ease some of the tension he always held. He pressed inside and all Athos’ breath left him at once.

It was absurd—not to say crude—to feel as if the emptiness in him could somehow be filled by this. But as Aramis slipped into him, Athos’ mind quieted for the first time in days. It was as if Aramis had put him back inside himself, stopping the gaps where doubt and shame would find their way in. Now, he was too full for that, though not literally: that would take a few more of Aramis’ fingers.

And _oh_ , Aramis knew what to do with them. A hooking motion had Athos gasping; a twist made Aramis chuckle at the way Athos reacted. Despite the lack of attention, his cock hadn't softened in the slightest. Aramis could likely bring him off without touching it again, if he wanted to. Aramis leaned in, causing Athos’ hips to tilt up an his thigh to ache where Aramis’ weight bore on it. Another finger prised him open and pleasure rolled through Athos. This was how Aramis worked, finding where he was comfortable, exploring thoroughly within those boundaries before pushing them. Even and especially when Athos wanted those boundaries trampled, Aramis could often have him begging first. That was its own kind of sting, though not one Athos hoped for tonight. Tonight, it was good simply to feel, to give himself over to one of his brothers, to let go of everything except their touch filling him up.

There was perhaps some of this implied when Athos said he wasn’t the marrying kind.

Aramis kept pace with the needy rocking of Athos’ hips, not altogether gentle in the way he thrust into Athos. That was what Athos needed—they always seemed to know what Athos needed, even when he was too gripped by shame to voice it. His other hand moved from Athos’ ankle around to ease across his belly, steadying him, then pressing along his cock. Athos clapped a hand to his mouth to stop himself groaning. Aramis made no move to stop him, instead curling his hand around Athos’ cock in a firm grasp. He made a tight circle around the base with thumb and forefinger, then pushed a third and fourth finger into Athos’ arse. Athos cursed behind his hand: Aramis was still within those boundaries, reminding Athos that four wasn’t too much for him. It ached, but in a way Athos loved it to ache. As Aramis began to stroke his cock, the ache became something even better.

It didn't take much after that. Aramis couldn't slide in and out of him as easily, turning and twisting his hand instead. Athos was stretched, stuffed, breached. Everything that had happened to him earlier was somewhere else, not here. Here was the garrison; here was Aramis and Porthos. Here too was D'Artagnan, and it was easy to imagine him among them like this. Perhaps it was D'Artagnan's presence that had pried his heart back open, making it flutter at Ninon. But it was not Ninon he truly wanted, in the end. Not in a moment like this, where he felt Aramis' fingers curl and the name he gasped against his hand was not Ninon's or Aramis'. Aramis glanced at him. Athos' voice was muffled, but the smirk suggested Aramis could guess.

Athos seized Aramis’ forearm, as though he could pull him deeper. His fingers dug in tight enough to bruise. Aramis adjusted, made a deft thrust, and Athos yelled into his own palm. He came before even knowing he would, seeing stars behind his eyes, wishing for a senseless moment he could keep Aramis there forever. To keep them Inseparable.

Pleasure crested in tandem with pain, until only a dull sting remained. Aramis eased his way out gradually, wiping Athos down with the same damp towel retrieved from the floor. Athos was exhausted, more than a bit sore, but not ready to sleep. Dreams would find him too easily, and _she_ would creep back into his mind when Aramis had done the work of chasing her out for a while.

Aramis chatted as he undressed himself and tidied their things away. Athos remained slouched in the bed, but he listened. Aramis eventually came to sit alongside him, placing a candlestick and a book on his nightstand. Athos lolled against his thigh.

‘I’m not going to ask who she was to you,’ Aramis said.

Athos wished he hadn’t breathed a sigh of relief at that. But he did, and Aramis surely noticed it.

He wanted to tell him. The words could tumble out of him, like they did when he last saw her. In Pinon, drunk and reeling, he was too shocked to keep it back. He’d held onto D’Artagnan, the only solid thing as his house burned before him and the ground crumbling beneath him. The confession was out, his secrets unraveling with the rest of it.

He’d meant to tell Aramis and Porthos many times. He’d come so close when grief and guilt tightened like a noose around his throat.

How she would scoff at him for imagining what it felt like. How uncannily she still knew him, returning like an omen the moment his heart felt a spark of something—for Ninon, and, yes, for D’Artagnan.

He feared that what Aramis and Porthos offered to him—their camaraderie, their friendship, especially their love—had only remained untouched because he’d kept his past buried. Once, he’d feared they’d hate him for what he’d done. Now—now that he’d seen how readily D’Artagnan had offered him forgiveness—he worried instead if she would somehow discover this, and ruin then.

Athos scolded himself silently. Aramis didn’t deserve to be treated as a distraction.

He looked up and Aramis’ eyes were forgiving. It was almost, and often, too much to bear. Aramis offered his heart so freely, and Porthos offered his so fully. Athos gave them neither, and yet. Yet, Aramis was smiling, trusting him with no good reason to do so.

Athos shuffled upright to flick a curl of hair from Aramis’ face, tucking it away. Aramis preened, with a look that dared Athos not to smile. So he did, just a little. Aramis had a way of making others see things the way he did, and he saw love as the easiest thing in the world.

Athos cupped his jaw, and Aramis leaned into it. A dimple appeared where Athos’ thumb brushed Aramis’ cheek, and his lashes fluttered shut. It assured Athos that a touch as small as this _mattered_ , even when he was paralysed with hesitation.

They loved him when he couldn’t love himself, and it had been enough.


End file.
